The Pacific Northwest Corridor, also known as the Pacific Northwest Rail Corridor, is one of eleven federally designated higher-speed rail corridors in the United States and Canada. The corridor is 466 miles (750 km) long. It runs from Eugene, Oregon, to Vancouver, British Columbia, passing through Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington, in the Pacific Northwest region. It was designated a high-speed rail corridor on October 20, 1992, as one of five high-speed corridors under the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 (ISTEA).
Current passenger service
The Pacific Northwest rail corridor is used by Amtrak and other local commuter trains. Amtrak runs the Amtrak Cascades service along the entire corridor and the Coast Starlight train from Seattle going south. The Empire Builder uses parts of the corridor in Seattle and Portland. BNSF Railway runs the Sounder commuter train for Sound Transit between Seattle and Tacoma, and between Seattle and Everett.
History
The Pacific Northwest Corridor was mainly built from the 1860s to the 1910s by the Southern Pacific Railroad, Northern Pacific Railway, and Great Northern Railway. Passenger service decreased after the 1910s, but Amtrak began providing passenger service across the entire corridor on May 1, 1971.
In 1866, the United States Congress gave land to a railway that had not yet been named and would later cross the Willamette Valley from Portland to the California border. A railway company that later became Ben Holladay’s Oregon Central Railroad started building tracks on the east side of the Willamette River in East Portland, Oregon, in April 1868. This railroad changed its name to the Oregon and California Railroad and completed tracks as far south as Roseburg, Oregon, by December 1872. In 1887, the Oregon and California Railroad was bought by the Southern Pacific Railroad (SP).
By 1940, the SP operated six daily round trips between Portland and Eugene: five long-distance trains (the Beaver, Cascade, Klamath, Oregonian, and West Coast) that traveled to Oakland via the Shasta Route, and the Rogue River local service that ran to Ashland, Oregon, on the older Siskiyou Line. Service gradually decreased; after September 1966, the Cascade was the only remaining SP service between Portland and Eugene. It was reduced to tri-weekly service in 1970 but continued until Amtrak began operations.
In 1864, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Northern Pacific Charter, which created the Northern Pacific Railway (NP) to build a rail connection between the Great Lakes and Puget Sound. Work on the first section of the railway in Washington Territory began at Kalama in 1870. In 1873, the NP decided to place its Puget Sound terminus in Tacoma, Washington. Scheduled service on the NP’s Pacific Division between Kalama and Tacoma began on January 5, 1874. The NP-affiliated Puget Sound Shore Railroad connected Tacoma to Seattle on July 6, 1884. Rail service between Tacoma and Portland, Oregon (with a ferry between Goble, Oregon, and Kalama) began on October 9, 1884. The original line was extended south from Kalama to Vancouver, Washington, in 1901 by the Washington Railway & Navigation Company, which was soon acquired by the NP. In 1906, the Portland and Seattle Railroad Company—a joint venture of the NP and Great Northern Railway (GN), both owned by James J. Hill—began construction of the final link from Vancouver into Portland. The 1908 opening of the Columbia River Bridge completed the all-rail route (“Prairie Line”) between Seattle and Portland, eliminating the need for the ferry crossing at Kalama.
By August 1909, the NP ran four daily round trips between Portland and Seattle. In January 1910, the NP signed an agreement with the Oregon–Washington Railroad and Navigation Company (a subsidiary of the Union Pacific Railroad) allowing the Union Pacific to use the Prairie Line. A similar agreement with the GN was reached that June. By May 1914, three railroads operated about 11 daily Seattle–Portland round trips (4 NP, 4 UP, and 3 GN) plus many freight trains. The GN used the 1884-built NP route into the 1906-built King Street Station in Seattle, while the UP used the 1909-built Milwaukee Road line into Union Station. The increased passenger service on the NP required the original single-track mainline to be straightened and doubled. This was completed between Portland and Kalama in 1909, and between Kalama and Tenino, Washington, around 1915.
However, the Prairie Line between Tenino and Tacoma had a 2.2-mile (3.5 km) section with a steep 2.2% grade. The NP opened Tacoma Union Station and the new water-level Point Defiance Line around Point Defiance in December 1914. The southern 6 miles (9.7 km) between Tenino and Plumb, Washington, used tracks from the Olympia Branch of the Port Townsend Southern Railroad, purchased earlier that year, while a short section east of Olympia used the 1891-built Tacoma, Olympia & Grays Harbor Railroad. Although slightly longer than the Prairie Line, the Point Defiance Line was flatter. The UP moved all service to the new line, and the NP moved most service, though the GN continued to use the old line.
By the mid-1920s, the GN, NP, and UP began operating “Pool Service,” where tickets were valid on all three railroads for Seattle–Portland trips. In 1933, the three railroads reduced service to one daily round trip each, a level that continued for several decades. The GN trip was moved to the Point Defiance Line on August 8, 1943, ending through service on the Prairie Line north of Tenino, and the last passenger service between Tacoma and Grays Harbor via Olympia and Lakewood ended in February 1956. The GN and NP were merged into the Burlington Northern Railroad (BN) in 1970. Final pre-Amtrak BN-UP Pool Service included three daily round trips—1 (UP) to Union Station and 2 (BN) to King Street. The original line was upgraded in the 2010s, with Sounder and Amtrak service added via the Point Defiance Bypass.
The original line from Seattle to Vancouver, British Columbia, was completed by four separate companies that were soon joined under James J. Hill’s Great Northern Railway (GN) to provide the GN with two Pacific ports. The Fairhaven and Southern Railroad (F&S) was completed from Sedro, Washington, to Fairhaven, Washington, in late 1889, with an extension to the international border at Blaine, Washington, completed on October 25, 1890. The Hill-controlled New Westminster Southern Railway was completed from Brownsville, British Columbia (across the Fraser River from New Westminster), to the international border, where it connected to the